For anyone still wondering whether Apple plans to give its new iAds a competitive advantage over other mobile ad networks on the iPhone and iPad, just take a look at the slide above. It was attached to an email sent to an app developer from a Quattro Wireless sales rep which I obtained (Quattro is Apple’s recently purchased mobile ad network). The email starts off:
We’re excited to announce a… → Read More
The Federal Trade Commission will decide whether or not to approve the pending Google-Admob acquisition in a meeting tomorrow that will include the commissioners and the FTC chairman, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter. The $750 million deal was first announced in November 2009.
The FTC has taken a particularly close look at the deal, and Google has made a significant lobbying effort… → Read More
The Federal Trade Commission is seriously thinking about blocking Google’s proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob on antitrust grounds. A decision on whether this is where the government will make its antitrust stand against Google is expected in the next few weeks. But before the FTC makes that decision, it might want to take a look at Apple’s new licensing terms for iPhone developers. If… → Read More
AdWhirl, the AdMob-owned service that allows mobile developers to quickly switch between mobile ad networks without having to update their applications, has just given developers even more flexibility: they can now include as many ad networks as they want, including both the default built-in set of networks and any other networks they want to integrate themselves.
This comes as a followup to… → Read More
As we noted earlier, mobile ad network AdMob has released its monthly mobile metrics report for March, which takes a close look at Android OS traffic. One interesting stat that was hidden in the report was that Android ad traffic overtook iPhone traffic in the U.S. for the month of March.
According to the report, Android traffic in the U.S. increased to 46 percent of operating system share… → Read More
Mobile Ad Network AdMob has released its monthly mobile metrics report for March, which takes a close look at Android OS traffic. In March 2010, there were 34 Android devices from 12 manufacturers available to consumers. In AdMob’s network in March 2010, 11 devices accounted for 96 percent of Android traffic, up from two devices in September 2009. The three primary versions of the Android OS… → Read More
The FTC is reportedly gearing up to challenge the Google-AdMob deal, due to anti-trust regulations The search giant acquired the popular mobile advertising network for $750 million last Fall. Reports emerged today from Reuters’ sources that the FTC’s lawyers will recommend that the Commission block the deal. We’re not surprised, considering that we heard that Google was taking the unprecedented… → Read More
A couple of weeks ago we reported that Google was taking the unprecedented step of reaching out to AdMob competitors to get their support around their acquisition of the company.
The FTC is looking very hard at the deal, and some consumer groups have lobbied the FTC to block it. Despite the fact that Apple acquired AdMob’s closest rival, Quattro Wireless.
But at least one of AdMob’s competitors… → Read More
Although the iPad apparently lacks Flash, that doesn’t mean that rich media won’t be able to function on the device. Yesterday, we heard that Brightcove will stream video in an HTML5 video player as opposed to a Flash unit. And today, Greystripe is announcing that it will be bringing its rich media iFlash ad units to the iPad in May.
Greystripe has been allowing advertisers to use Flash-like… → Read More
According to AdMob, smartphones accounted for 48 percent of its worldwide traffic last month, up from 35 percent in February 2009. Dominant still is iPhone OS, which has increased its share of smartphone requests on the AdMob network from 33 percent in February 2009 to 50 percent in February 2010. Android, however, is the fastest-growing these days.
Symbian is the big loser: while it accounted… → Read More
AdMob, the mobile advertising unit bought by Google last year for a whopping $750 million, is upgrading its platform today. The company is launching new SDK’s for Android, Flash Lite and iPhone platforms and is also rolling out a number of new publisher tools, including a new publisher dashboard, an enhanced Reporting UI, a new Reporting API and Server Side SDK Controls.
The new Android SDK… → Read More
Google is reaching out to mobile companies for help in getting their proposed Admob acquisition cleared by the FTC. Specifically, they’re asking select companies to write letters in support of the deal, which Google will then forward to the FTC.
We spoke with one mobile advertising company this afternoon that received the request from Google. The company was asked to write their thoughts on “Do… → Read More
In our Scamville series of posts last October we exposed the massive user fraud occurring Facebook and MySpace social games. Fake quizzes tied to long term mobile subscriptions, malware-laden toolbar downloads and other scams were the center of the controversy. The industry did a lot of talking in the wake of those posts and some long term changes have been made. For the most part, for example… → Read More
AdMob, the mobile advertising network currently being acquired by Google, this morning featured the latest results of its monthly analysis of consumer usage and attitudes across the Android, iPhone and webOS application platforms in its January 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report.
Among the most interesting things the survey found is the conclusion that 91 percent of iPhone users would recommend… → Read More
When it comes to the mobile Web, increasingly there are only two mobile platforms that matter: Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. According to market share data put out today by AdMob (which is being acquired by Google), the iPhone and Android combined captured 81 percent of U.S. mobile ad impressions on smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from a combined 55 percent in the first… → Read More
We’re hearing that Apple is buying mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless for $275 million. This jives with reports earlier this evening of a deal between the two companies. Our source says that there was initially talk of a $400 million pricetag, but that has since come down. We’ve also heard that Microsoft may have been very interested as well.
The news comes only two months after… → Read More
Mobile ad network AdMob has just released its latest stats tracking the rise of Android, and it’s clear that Google’s mobile platform is quickly gaining steam. AdMob writes that between October and December, the number of ad requests worldwide from Android devices increased a whopping 97% to over 1 billion ad requests. In other words, the number of requests from Android devices doubled in just… → Read More
Google recently revealed that the Federal Trade Commission was intensely reviewing the search giant’s recent $750 million acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob. Last week, Google said the FTC has made a second request for further information about the deal. Today, two consumer groups, Consumer Watchdog and the Center For Digital Democracy, have asked the FTC to block the deal on anti-trust… → Read More
We track a lot of acquisitions on CrunchBase. At the beginning of 2009, acquisitions were at a standstill. But as the economy begrudgingly roused itself from recession, the deal flow started to pick up in the summer, and then rebounded more in the third quarter. There are still a couple weeks left in the year, and a lot can still happen, such as Google buying Yelp for more than $500… → Read More
AdWhirl is a mobile advertising service that allows app developers to easily switch ad networks without being a hassle to the end users. They were acquired by the ad network AdMob back in August, but that hasn’t stopped them from doing what they do. And today, they’re making their offering even better by open sourcing the whole thing.
With the new AdWhirl iPhone SDK, developers can now customize… → Read More
Mobile advertising network Greystripe is rolling out its ad formats for the Android this morning, offering Android app developers with an an Android SDK and an opportunity to monetize their applications. Greystripe, which has delivered ads into over 300 million ad-supported games and applications on the iPhone and Java platform, says that with the success of its ads on iPhone apps, it makes… → Read More
As the ecosystem around iPhone apps continues to explode, the opportunity for advertising and monetization grows simultaneously. There are been an abundance of mobile and specifically iPhone centric ad-networks that have emerged, like AdMob (which was acquired by Google a few weeks ago), Greystripe, InMobi and others, to help developers make money from advertising on aps. And ad exchange startups… → Read More
In August, we covered mobile ad network InMobi, which was been performing very well in the Asia and Africa and beginning to expand to Europe. My colleague Robin Wauters wrote that while InMobi was seeing success in some global markets, traction in Europe is key for the ad network to really take off. Four months later, InMobi is now profitable and seeing a fair amount of growth in Europe and South… → Read More
There continue to be conflicting views as to whether iPhone developers actually make money from ads on the iPhone. One issue is that free app developers who advertise in games end up paying on a CPC basis, in which the click takes the visitor to the App Store. But often times the actual download doesn’t take place, so the developer is left paying for clicks that don’t produce conversions, says… → Read More
When Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned a few weeks ago that the M&A spigot is now back on at the search giant, he wasn’t talking about a trickle. Today’s announced deal to by mobile ad startup AdMob for $750 million is Google’s largest acquisition since its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick in March, 2008, and its third-largest ever after the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition in 2006.
Why… → Read More
Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, for $750 million. This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel — they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA). More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate… → Read More
Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile ad platform that has been especially popular on the iPhone, for $750 million. This is a big win for the company’s early investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners (this is a huge day for Accel — they were also investors in Playfish, which was just acquired by EA. More recent investors include DFJ and Northgate… → Read More
WIth the rise of Web phones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm (Verizon’s CEO says that 40% of its new phone sales are such smartphones), mobile advertising promises to be a huge growth area. The Kelsey Group, a market research firm, projects that the mobile advertising market will balloon from $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion in 2013.
Of course, that is just an educated guess… → Read More
In the budding world of mobile advertising, whoever can control the app developers and gain access to the ad inventory on their apps will eventually win the game. Keep that in mind as you try to understand the very strange acquisition of AdWhirl by AdMob.
You see, AdMob is perhaps the largest independent mobile ad network and AdWhirl is a fast growing mobile ad exchange which allows mobile app… → Read More
We’ve heard from numerous sources that mobile ad network AdMob may be in the process of acquiring AdWhirl, the startup that lets iPhone developers tap into multiple ad networks. One source has even said that AdWhirl is already working out of AdMob’s offices, though we haven’t confirmed this. Update: this is confirmed
Asked on the phone whether AdWhirl has been acquired by AdMob, AdWhirl CEO Sam… → Read More
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